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Short abstract:

Using ethnography and archival research this paper aims to trace the historical process of assetization using two modernizing projects that started at the end of 19th century in the Romanian Principalities to reveal a techno-economic lock-in that reverberates to the present day.

Long abstract:

"Land becomes a strategic asset under climate change, which also means erosion, desertification”, this is an excerpt from the daily newspaper of the Romanian Orthodox Church, The Light [in rom. Lumina]. The peculiar article discusses how good land can be a competitive advantage in the coming years due to climate threats. Since when is the church interested in assets? Using ethnography and archival research I trace the process of assetization (Birch and Muniesa, 2020) and its naturalization as an affective-cognitive fixation and techno-political lock-in.

The paper reveals the technical and political entanglements between two modernizing projects that started in the second half of the 19th century, in the Romanian Principalities: The First Agrarian Reform (1864) and the First Rural Credit Society (1873). The former aimed to grant land ownership to the peasants, the latter was set up to finance and consolidate large estates affected by reform and threatened by mounting debts. Both are crucial in understanding the activation of land as an asset from a historical perspective in this part of Eastern Europe, in contrast with land as a fictitious commodity à la Karl Polanyi (1944) in the West.

Finally, my paper aims to shed light on the complex dynamics between the historical roots of assetization, socio-economic blockage and environmental threats, adding an ethnographic perspective on the present day land use in a village, in Southern Romania, threatened by the advance of mobile sands, desertification and big financial players.